Entries by Sarah

Transforming food supply chains for sustainability

Modern food supply chains—infused with scientific and engineering innovations—have made food increasingly more affordable and accessible. Yet there is growing concern about the long-term sustainability of our food system. Over time, the inputs (e.g., water, fertile soil, fossil fuels, and chemicals) and working resources (e.g., land and labor) required for industrial food production and its associated supply chain structure have become more scarce and hence more expensive. At the same time, the by-products of these farming and supply chain activities (e.g., farm runoff and greenhouse gas emissions) have often created negative externalities on the environment and human health. To improve the sustainability of food production, research from the life sciences recommends adoption of transformative farming methods that incorporate ecological principles in a sustainable approach to farming. Operationally, this approach leverages economies of scope. In order to maintain strategic alignment, changing food production methods should be complemented with appropriate changes in the rest of the supply chain, including consumption habits. We propose a research agenda informed by findings from the life sciences, which integrates approaches from supply chain management as well as food and agricultural economics, to align all food supply chain partners with sustainable food production.

Regenerative Grazing, Carbon, and Climate

Can regenerative agriculture mitigate climate change? Does regenerative grazing sequester more carbon? Arguments abound as to the role of regenerative agriculture—and grazing specifically—as a natural climate solution, each with their own supporting and dissenting evidence. Understanding the way that carbon is introduced to the atmosphere, captured by soils, and stored by soils is critical to defining a position on this topic.

Current state of enteric methane and the carbon footprint of beef and dairy cattle in the United States

Livestock is an integral part of societies worldwide and contributes to a host of human activities beyond food production, including income, heritage, insurance, labor, and culture. Livestock’s positive contributions to society are contrasted by environmental impacts, which include greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, biodiversity loss, and natural resource depletion, among others. Though environmental impacts of ruminant livestock production extend beyond GHG emissions (Rotz, 2020), considerable effort has been dedicated specifically to quantifying and mitigating enteric methane (CH4) emissions from beef and dairy cattle, which is the focus of this review.

Quantifying Biodiversity Co-benefits from Livestock Production A Case Study of Beef Grazing Management in Central Florida

Improved grazing management can enhance the multifunctionality of agroecosystems by drawing carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere and into soils complementing international efforts to curb and cease CO2 emissions. The adoption of improved grazing strategies to mitigate climate change, however, may come at the expensive of other critical agroecosystem co-benefits like biodiversity, and understanding these tradeoffs is important for informed decision making. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one approach to evaluate multiple environmental services associated with an agricultural product, i.e., 1 kg of beef live weight (LW). Few livestock LCAs include a biodiversity assessment due to difficulty and complexity in quantifying biodiversity impacts at appropriate spatial-temporal scales or beyond those associated with land use. We applied the recent Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Livestock Environmental Assessment Partnership (LEAP) biodiversity guidelines to a case study ranch located at Archbold Biological Stations Buck Island Ranch to 1) assist practitioners in understanding and differentiating between the regional (i.e., potential species loss) and site-specific (i.e., pressure-state-response) quantification approaches in the LEAP guidelines, and 2) evaluate the differences and similarities between the two approaches for quantifying biodiversity impacts under two types of pasture management. Our results illustrate how indicator selection and functional unit may result in discrepancies between the two approaches. Differences between methods can be attributed to differences in quantifying biodiversity impact potential species loss (land occupation) vs. biotic integrity (integrated measure of land and non-land related impacts) and whether biodiversity impacts are evaluated on a cumulative or a footprint basis. The growing global demand for livestock products and the interest in the livestock sector to capture and store atmospheric carbon demands that biodiversity impacts are incorporated into holistic evaluations of mitigation intervention co-benefits and tradeoffs.

Accounting for the hidden costs of agrifood systems in data-scarce contexts: Background paper for The State of Food and Agriculture 2023

This background paper to The State of Food and Agriculture 2023 reviews the methods used, as well as the data required, to estimate the hidden environmental, social and health costs associated with agrifood systems. The studies analysed are based on the true cost accounting approach, which can facilitate improved decision-making by policymakers, businesses, farmers, investors and consumers. The reviewed studies demonstrate that hidden costs of agrifood systems are considerable, and that action is needed at global, national and local levels.

To apply true cost accounting at the country level, the methods developed must be downscaled and the data limitations overcome. This review goes through each cost category – environmental, social and health – and proposes approaches to deal with them, with a focus on country-level estimates and analysis, especially in data-scarce countries. Where data are not available or time is limited, methods combining secondary data are suggested. In some cases, the suggestion is to collaborate with research centres.
The paper further argues that, when addressing hidden costs in agrifood systems, trade-offs may arise, which may require the use of more complex tools, such as partial and general equilibrium models, to analyse their impacts on different areas. In general, the extent of the compromise will be minimized if there are at least as many policy instruments as there are objectives. For example, if a country seeks to restore fish stocks and address rural poverty, restricting catch alone could increase poverty in the artisanal fishing community. Adding income support, however, could allow both objectives to be met.

PSIII-9 Hempseed Meal as an Effective Protein Supplement for Finishing Wethers

As our global agriculture landscape continues to change it has become more important than ever to find sustainable alternatives to feed livestock. Hempseed and its derivatives may provide alternative sources of nutrients for inclusion in livestock diets, however, due to the paucity of research on hemp and its byproducts, there is no authorization of the inclusion of these products in food animal diets. We hypothesized that the digestibility and use of hempseed meal would be similar to other livestock protein sources. Forty Western White-Faced wethers were used in a completely randomized block design with 5 treatments. These treatments included diets formulated to be near isonitrogenous with 0, 5, 10, 15, or 20% of diet DM as hemp seed meal, primarily as a substitute for dried distillers grains with solubles. Wethers were fed the diets individually for 90 d, which was followed by a 5 d balance trial with a total collection of urine and feces. There were no differences in DM intake (P = 0.44) or average daily gain (P= .16) between treatments. There were no differences in DM digestibility (P = 0.86) or N digestibility (P = 0.29) between treatments, although there was a slight increase in P digestibility as hemp meal inclusion increased until it represented 15% of the dietary DM (P = 0.02). There were no differences in the digestibility of Ca (P=0.44), Mg (P = 0.10), K (P = 0.85), or Na (P = 0.54). There were no differences in urinary N excretion (P=0.33) or urinary urea excretion (P=0.34) between treatments. Additionally, blood chemistry constituents were also not affected by treatment (P ≥ 0.10). Based on these data, it is concluded that hemp seed meal is a comparable protein supplement for sheep with no identified deleterious effects.

Strengthening Our Understanding of the Food-Energy-Water Nexus through Completing Suppressed Datasets

The demand for food, energy, and water (FEW) from agricultural production will rise with population growth, urbanization, and income. Agricultural production, however, contributes to freshwater depletion, energy consumption, and land use. Without effective mitigation, the food system’s environmental impact is estimated to increase by 50-92% between 2010 and 2050, which could be beyond the safe operating space for humanity. An extensive literature emphasizes the urgent need for multidisciplinary scientific efforts to better understand the FEW nexus.

Assessing the carbon footprint of fresh produce assembly and distribution in the U.S.

Transportation is the largest end-use contributor toward global warming. The
contemporary food system provides consumers with convenience, extensive choice, and the year-
round availability of fresh produce. In this paper, these achievements are recognized within the
context of the associated environmental impacts. While many analyses have considered the energy
and material efficiency of various options for food production and packaging, very few studies
have investigated the environmental impacts of the transport components of food supply chains.
This analysis adds to the existing literature by considering the GHG emissions associated with the
aggregation and distribution of fresh produce products consumed by American households. We
use a two-stage hybrid approach to identify the most efficient fresh produce assembly and
distribution patterns. In the first stage, the facility location problem is formulated as a cost
minimization problem. The result obtained in the first stage is used in the second stage to develop
a travel distance minimization problem to optimize the design of the supply chain network. This
approach allows the simultaneous consideration of two dimensions of sustainability including
carbon footprint and the total cost of the supply chain design. The proposed approach generates a
tradeoff analysis between environmental emissions and associated costs for making informed
decisions on designing sustainable supply chains.

Facility locations in the fresh produce supply chain: An integration of optimization and empirical methods

Facility locations are crucial determinants of supply chain efficiency for aggregating and distributing products. The multi-disciplinary nature of the facility location problem requires multiple complementary approaches, at different levels of aggregation, to accommodate the salient features of location determinants. This study examines the facility location problem for the U.S. fresh produce supply chain. We present a model that incorporates an empirical scenario into a facility location problem in order to capture much of the information required to make an optimal location decision. Our results suggest that the reliability of facility locations can be improved without significantly increasing the operating costs. This study sheds light on how the application of complementary modeling approaches improves the effectiveness of facility location solutions.

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